Amen Thompson - Point [Forward or Guard?]

Yep, I agree Tari has a lot of work to do offensively. Also I wouldn’t trade Brooks just yet because we still don’t know how Tari will be health wise considering he has a rod and screws in his leg.

 

Beast

 

It's gonna be hard as hell to build a championship roster around an aging Lebron and a Sometimes AD when they combine for $94,635,245 which equates to just a fraction under (6/10000th under) 50% of the second apron which is for most teams a hard cap.

They have ~$10m of space between the current active roster cap and the 2nd apron and a late 2nd round pick from LAC to work with ..... that's a tall ask.

 

Sure he should work on his 3PT shot but he’s probably going to be a better defender than Dillon next season. It’s Dillon who has to out-shoot Tari to keep that role imo. Tari was our highest impact player despite mediocre offense. That means he’s a monster defender already. Better than Brooks in transition, ten times the rebounder, physical profile elite, room to add strength, can hit open 3’s higher than 36%.

Brooks and Tari are both shooting 36% btw it’s just Brooks takes 2-3 more of them. Tari improved the jumper in his one season so if he’s going to follow an average improvement for players with his experience, it’s looking highly likely Brooks will struggle to keep up.

With Tari I’m just worried about health.

 

Have we moved past the idea of Amen as a PG? I'm genuinely asking because I'm not sure what I see as his future, and I'm wondering what other people see.

He definitely seems more in the mold of Draymond/(older) Iggy / Ben Simmons than Rajon Rondo, so as of now I'm seeing him as a forward in the long run. That is, he's more of a "connective" passer than an offensive orchestrator. But I'm not prepared to dismiss the possibility that he's able to eventually be more of a PG on offense.

 

Even if Tari ends up having issues, we do also have Amen, Cam, and a mid-lotto pick in a draft class with plenty of forwards.

I think he's a pretty versatile, coachable player who is playing that way right now because that's what we need and what Ime is asking him to do. Not ready to write him off as a point guard, though I think he can certainly also play at the 2, 3, or even 4 spots.

 

Next year we need to let FVV play off ball more as a shooter and let Amen work as the playmaker

Amen looks 1-2 years away from being the new euro step king of this league and a floater away from being unstoppable. I think once away gets consistent reps and comfortable he can play point

 

If both Alpi and Jalen mature into steady, reliable stars who understand how successful NBA offenses operate, the other backcourt position becomes a G instead of a PG because running point become much less important and off-ball becomes VERY important.

 

That makes sense, but....

Have you found yourself thinking, "this Phoenix Suns team needs a PG"? Because I have. Booker has become really good at assisting, and KD/Beal are both pretty good. Yet, IMO, they're still missing someone who can get their stuff set and organized.

 

I don't think we have moved past the idea of Amen as a PG. It's more that Amen doesn't have the handles to become an actual PG right now. He would need to improve his handles significantly to become a PG

 

Neither Beal nor Booker are facilitators. Their games are different but they think alike.

Alpi is most definitely a facilitator and Jalen has shown promise recently as defenses began targeting him.

 

Amen will be ready to play pg when we need him to.

 

Booker assist percentage is 31, while Alpi is 25.

Booker gets 6.9 apg, while Alpi gets 5 apg.

Booker has a 2.7 assist/to ratio, while Alpi has 1.9 assist/to ratio.

We can't look at those numbers and declare Sengun to be the superior facilitator. Now maybe you're saying Sengun will eventually be a better facilitator than Booker, and ok, maybe he can be. But he's definitely not right now.

 

He's got a ways to go before he's a primary facilitator and I think Ime really helped simplify his offensive role this season. I haven't totally moved past the idea, but that's a pretty steep hill to climb. I agree with the bolded.

 

Some of the Rockets kind of remind me of the early 2000's Kings. Sengun is like Divac, VanVleet is like Bibby, Brooks is like Christie, Holiday even kind of reminds of Bobby Jackson. Too bad we don't have a Webber or a Peja (Though Smith would be as close as we could get as he was supposed to be a pure shooter like him). Amen is just Amen. He's special though.

 

And Jalen is like if you added number 8 Kobe to that Kings team.